‘Love Island’: Do the Contestants Get Their Hair and Nails Done While on the Show?
No matter if you’re watching the U.K., American, or Australian versions of Love Island, you can bet your paycheck on one thing, the contestants are going to be attractive. And not just your everyday, run-of-the-mill cute, but Instagram model attractive. And even though they are on the show for weeks at a time, their haircuts never seem to grow out, their nails never look haggard, and their lashes are never in danger of sliding off. So, what gives? Are they allowed to get beauty treatments while on the show?
Do the Islanders get professional beauty help on ‘Love Island’?
Depending on which series of Love Island Islanders get cast on, they could be on the show for up to eight weeks. Even the world’s best manicure is pushing it at the three-week mark. According to IIain Stirling, the narrator of the U.K. version, the Islanders do get hair and beauty treatments.
“There’s more professional support with hair and beauty now,” he told Vice. “If you jump on ITVHub and watch the early series, by the end they all look quite scruffy – now they don’t.”
Past U.K. Islander Kady McDermott also shed light on the grooming tactics inside the villa.
“We had our nails done once the whole time – I was there for 6 weeks!,” she told Cosmopolitan of her time in the villa in 2016. “The boys got haircuts twice while we were there. We got our makeup done for the final which was nice. Superdrug sponsors the show, so they did send us loads of hair masks and face treatments, but other than that, we never had people come in.”
But in recent years, the Islanders have received more regular beauty treatments.
“Every two or three weeks we’d have nails, hair, that kind of thing done,” Lucie Donlan told Capital. “And we’d get a Maccies as well. Being in there that long, the nights are very long and no one sees how long they are, so you need a bit of a down day and a bit of a chill.”
If you pay close attention, you can see the girl’s nails changing every few episodes on the show.
People also come in to make dinner
Beauty isn’t the only thing the Islanders don’t have to worry about. All of their meals are also handled by outside parties.
“We would have food cooked for us at dinner, and producers would come to change our mic batteries,” McDermott told the outlet. “That’s why dinner is never filmed or you don’t see anyone eating hot food. The food tasted amazing. They used to give us a dessert after every lunch and every dinner, and the cake was unreal, and we could request food if we wanted.”
But the cast doesn’t get alcohol with their meals.
“The villa is basically a booze-free zone,” Stirling told Vice. “They don’t have to cook, but they do eat together. We don’t show mealtimes, though, because it would be a nightmare to cover and you wouldn’t be able to hear what’s being said.
How is ‘Love Island’ made?
The show might look like a small operation, with the cast pretty much sequestered to one location, but it takes a lot of moving parts working in tandem to make it all come together.
“Well, the team working on it is in the hundreds: you’ve got a camera team filming all the dates and the glamour and slo-mo shots,” Stirling said. “Then you have the challenge team, who come up with, build and curate the tasks. There’s the inside villa film crew, and another which looks after the villa, and the edit team – each has both day and night. The gallery has directors and runners, and there’s the sound team, plus execs, transport, catering, cabling, me. It’s huge.”
